


The Second Face

by Immanuel



Series: Inferno [4]
Category: Horus Heresy - Various Authors, Warhammer 40.000, Warhammer 40k (Novels) - Various Authors
Genre: Gen, Knights Errant - Horus Heresy, World Eaters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-25
Updated: 2015-05-25
Packaged: 2018-04-01 04:33:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,519
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4005994
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Immanuel/pseuds/Immanuel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Captain Tukan Vhor of the World Eaters ignored the summons to muster in the Isstvan system. His absence did not go unnoticed, and the time has come to answer for it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Second Face

++CENTURION!++ THE VOICE scratched at the edge of his perception, fighting against the tide of rage in his mind.  
  ++Vhor, come in damnit!++  
  Tukan Vhor withdrew his claws slowly from the chest of his latest kill, gently pulling against the suction of the wound. At some point he must have deactivated the power field, or else it had given out. The body dropped to the ground, joining a handful of others discarded along the length of the bloodstained corridor. There wasn’t a weapon in sight. Civilians? It didn’t matter. The city had rebelled against Imperial rule, all lives were forfeit.  
  ++Centurion, respond!++  
  There was that voice again. The voice of Admiral Kobani Rokem aboard the _Unconquerable Will_ incessantly wittering in his vox-bead.  
  “Ugh,” Vhor groaned as the Butcher’s Nails gave a defiant kick against the end of the bloodshed. Behind him, he heard the roar of chainblades and fought the urge to join his brothers.  
  ++Is that you, Vhor?++  
  “What do you want,” Vhor growled.  
  ++Sire, an emissary has arrived from the 63rd Expeditionary Fleet – Captain Driskol of the Sixteenth Legion.++  
  Vhor rolled his eyes inside his helm. He’d wondered if there would be any repercussions when he ignored the orders to muster in the Isstvan system. It was no surprise that his own Legion had not come; he doubted Angron had even noticed his absence.  
  ++The Captain wishes to know wh-++  
  “I know what he wants,” Vhor cut the Admiral off, making no attempt to hide his irritation. No World Eater ever did. “He can wait. We’re almost done here.”  
  ++Sire,++ Rokem hesitated, wary of the Centurion’s temper.  
  “What.”  
  ++They have already been waiting for several hours. When we picked up your location they decided they would go to you.++  
Vhor let out an exasperated sigh.  
  “Just what I bloody need.” He shut off the link to the fleet, switching to his command squad’s channel. “This is Centurion Vhor. Converge on my position. We’re expecting visitors.”

The front ramp of the Thunderhawk opened with a pneumatic hiss, disgorging its cargo of transhuman warriors. The Sons of Horus moved independently, yet in harmony, a legacy of the gangs of Cthonia along with the jagged glyphs carved into mark IV plate. It wasn’t the parade-ground precision of the Thirteenth, but compared to the loose knot of the World Eaters’ command squad it might as well have been.  
Driskol stepped out ahead of the others, removing his helm. His eyes swept the rooftop, lingering with mild curiosity at the scattered remains of a few dismembered civilians who had fled upwards in vain.  
  “Centurion Vhor,” he began. “I-“  
  “Tell me,” Vhor interrupted, gesturing to Veteran Sergeant Nablus to remove his helm. It was impossible to do it himself with the Cerberus-pattern lightning claws. “Could you really not wait ‘til we finished?”  
  Driskol raised an eyebrow quizzically. He gestured to the nearest civilian corpse.  
  “When you are down to butchering civilians, it usually means the battle is finished.”  
Vhor scowled at the Captain, who raised his hand to forestall further comment before continuing. The gesture was almost laughable in the face of the towering mass of rage bound in bloodstained Cataphractii-pattern terminator armour.  
  “You did not come to Isstvan.”  
  It was not a question, but it demanded an explanation nevertheless.  
  “There’s a big galaxy to conquer. Four Legions to quell a minor rebellion on the edge of nowhere seemed like overkill. I daresay you managed well enough without me.”  
  “The Warmaster is not used to being disobeyed.”  
  “I didn’t disobey the Warmaster,” Vhor grinned, his scarred features turning it into a sneer. “Was Angron very upset that I didn’t come?”  
Driskol narrowed his eyes, tilting his head to the side.  
  “Hard to tell. He was very angry about a great many things. It is the Warmaster sending for you now. Will you heed the Warmaster’s call, or are you intent on continuing to slaughter your way across pointless worlds the Imperium could not care less about?”  
  “Every world must be brought into compliance. Every world.”  
  “A great gathering of Legions is taking place at Isstvan V. The future and freedom of the Imperium is at stake, but we have a chance to stop the greatest threat to mankind before it leads to our downfall.”  
  Silence settled as Vhor processed what he was being told, wondering what alien could now threaten the Imperium and how Horus could have discovered it early enough to launch a pre-emptive strike. At that moment, words Angron had spoken of the Nucerian High-Riders sprang unbidden to mind: _“They should have killed me when they had the chance. They should have seen it coming, and they should have killed me. But they were too far removed from the reality of those beneath them.”_  
  Every logical thought fought against what he was thinking, but the instinct – the _impossible_ instinct – would not be shut down.  
  “The threat does not come from without.”  
  The meaning behind those words weighed on the moment. Driskol saw understanding in Vhor’s eyes and the corner of his mouth curled in satisfaction.  
  “What the Emperor is doing on Terra will destroy everything we have worked to build.”  
  “Angron is with you,” Vhor’s voice was distant, contemplating.  
  “The World Eaters are with us,” Driskol corrected, nodding. “Are you not World Eaters?”  
  “War Hounds,” the voice of Ramphast Nablus whispered in his ear over a private channel.  
War Hounds. The Twelfth Legion as it was before Angron. Before the Butchers’ Nails. Vhor’s command squad came from many different systems, but a few, like him, were Terran and remembered that time. In truth, little had changed after Angron had the Nails hammered into their heads. They killed the same as they always had, only now they were enslaved to the Nails pounding in their brains. _That_ was what they were enslaved by, not the Imperium. And there was no being free of the Nails.  
  “War Hounds,” Vhor replied over a company-wide frequency, adding an order code to all units fall back to their gunships and make for the fleet.  
  “Kobani,” Nablus spoke over a private channel to the fleet.  
  ++Sire?++ Rokem sounded concerned – the Sergeant only ever bothered to address him by name when things were about to get bloody.  
  “Open fire and prepare to receive us via teleport. We are about to be at war with the Warmaster.”  
  ++As you command.++ To his credit, the Admiral did not even flinch as he acknowledged the order to commit treason.  
  Driskol’s brows furrowed in confusion at Vhor’s words. He opened his mouth to inquire, then opened it further in shock at the lightning claw embedded in his chest. The blades stuttered, but failed to ignite. Vhor cursed, and Driskol gave the order to open fire even as the World Eaters were a pace into their charge.  
  The roar of bolter fire filled the air. The whining discharge of a volkite caliver pierced the cacophony, accompanied by the crash of a falling terminator. The volley of fire broke on the nigh-impenetrable Cataphractii-pattern terminator armour of the World Eaters, themselves pumping a fully automatic volley of bolter fire into the Sons of Horus as they charged. With a resounding clang, the World Eaters impacted the enemy lines. And smashed straight through it.  
  Vhor felt a lance of pain punch through his side, slashing wildly at Driskol as he rolled away. The blow failed to connect with the Captain, but gave birth to a miniature star between the combatants where it struck the venting plasma pistol clutched in his fist. When the glare was gone, so was the fist.  
  A foot firmly planted in his chest put Driskol on the ground, the mass of the armour pressing on top of it keeping him there. The Captain snarled, making a futile attempt to reach for the sword at his waist with his remaining hand. Malformed claws half-melted by plasma intercepted the move.  
  “You will all die for this,” Driskol spat, his face twisted in rage. It almost made him look like Angron.  
  “We never cared if we lived or died,” Vhor looked almost serene as he tightened his grip on the arm. “We just kill.”  
  With a screech of tearing metal, Driskol’s arm came loose. Vhor took a step, crushing his enemy’s head underfoot as he lunged forward into a Son of Horus knocked back by the World Eaters’ charge. In spite of the plasma damage, this time the claws lit and punched through the breastplate, shredding internal organs as the grip closed. Vhor lifted the dying space marine from his feet, hurling him into another. By the time the legionary had thrown off his fallen brother’s body and regained his feet, he was staring into the slashing blades of Vhor’s lightning claws the moment before they removed his head.  
  For all its brevity, the battle had reaped a bloody toll. Fifteen Sons of Horus lay dead, most in two or more pieces, alongside three World Eaters terminators. None of the four survivors had escaped unwounded, but it was nothing that would slow them down.  
  Nablus held out Vhor’s helm, dented from where he had employed it as a makeshift bludgeon. Vhor grinned as he stooped to allow the sergeant to replace the helm.  
  “Take us up,” Vhor voxed to the _Unconquerable Will_ , casting a last look around the bodies of the Sons of Horus. “There’s nothing left down here for the living.”  
++Aye, calibrating teleport now sire,++ Rokem responded ++You might like to know we’ve been boarded.++  
Vhor’s lips peeled back from metal teeth in a savage grin.  
“Just the way I like it.”

The Butcher’s Nails screamed as the pressure of teleportation receded. Vhor and his squad lumbered forward towards the nearest threat indicator highlighted by Admiral Rokem, desperate to kill something and placate the Nails.  
  ++I’ve brought you near the main boarding force. Other terminator squads have been teleported close to other breaches,++ Rokem paused, considering his next words. ++The others are retreating to the gunships, but… not all agree with you, sire. The company is tearing itself apart on the surface.++  
  “It’ll work itself out,” Vhor dismissed the Admiral’s concerns, shutting off the vox as he turned a corner onto the bridge’s primary access corridor – and into enemy fire.  
  The World Eaters charged headlong through a hail of bolt shells, Nablus taking the lead to punch a hole through the wall of enemy boarding shields that barred the corridor with a ferocious swing of his thunder hammer. The rest of the command squad powered through the breach into the heart of the enemy.  
  The Third Legion was in disarray, caught on the back foot by the sudden arrival of four terminators. Those that survived the initial charge quickly regained their composure, parting before the armoured juggernauts.  
  A roar of rage escaped Vhor at their cowardice. Looking down the avenue they had created, he saw their plan. Before him were a squad of kakophoni, Emperor’s Children wielding baroque contraptions that unleased blast of sonic energy. The waves of sound, disperse as they were, were more distracting than anything else, but it was enough to provide an opening. Nablus dropped to the ground, his legs removed from under him. It didn’t stop him reaping a heavy toll on anything within reach.  
  Lowering his head against the onslaught, Vhor charged into the Kakophoni, spinning as he hit their lines. Emperor’s Children fell before him as his lightning claws passed effortlessly through armour covered in patches of flayed skin. A sonic blaster exploded as a powered claw severed some crucial line, claiming the life of its bearer and knocking a handful of kakophoni back. A spray of blood followed as the backhand blow caved in another kakophonus’ head.  
  Reclaiming the initiative, one of the kakophoni sprinted forward, dodging around Vhor’s side. Twisting a dial on the side of the ludicrously complex sonic blaster he carried, he sent a concentrated wave of sound into the Centurion’s rear. Vhor staggered, the blast turning his momentum against him and sending him stumbling down a side corridor. The kakophonus advanced after him, sending pulse after pulse of sonic energy screeching from the daemonic mouth decorating the blaster’s barrel.  
  Vhor reached out, his claws digging deep into the wall of the corridor as he fought his bulk to a halt. Gritting his teeth against the continued sonic barrage, he turned to face his aggressor. Every nerve in his body screamed in agony as he fought, step by step, to advance on the wide-eyed noise marine. The Butchers’ Nails kept him going, a walking patchwork of conflicting agonies. A stray bolt round gave him the opening he needed as it struck his enemy in the back, knocking him forward and jolting his finger from the trigger.  
  Gripping the blaster and pointing the barrel away from him, Vhor looked into a face he recognized. The scars of acid-burn were unmistakable in spite of the wide-eyed stare and discoloured veins throbbing under near-translucent skin.  
  “Avakul Morr,” he growled, ripping the weapon away as he aimed a blow at the acid-burned face he had last seen a decade ago, before there was a Warmaster to rebel against the Emperor.  
  Morr sprang back, smiling as if pleased at the recognition. A soft hissing passed through his bared teeth as he picked up a chainaxe from where it lay next to the body of a World Eater slain in the boarders’ advance.  
  “Now, let’s do this properly,” Vhor snarled as he crushed the sonic blaster in his claws, the weapon’s artificed construction no match for the breaching drills concealed within the palms of his Cerberus-pattern lightning claws.  
  The kakophonus gave a mocking flourish. The hissing died down, tapering as if venting pressure. Vhor noticed a bulge pulsating in Morr’s neck and wondered what would happen if-  
  His train of thought was interrupted as a lightning-fast blow came at him. But not fast enough. He raised a claw and swatted the blow aside, sparks flying from the impact where it landed beneath the powered claw-blades.  
  “This is new, a World Eater who can talk and fight at the same time,” Morr retorted, ducking the counter-swipe and striking a blow that bounced harmlessly off his enemy’s armour. “The galaxy really has gone mad, you’re normally slavering like rabid beasts by the time you get in close.”  
  “Hate to shatter your illusions, traitor,” Vhor growled, ramming his shoulder into Morr’s chest and knocking the swordsman back two paces. “I’ll shed a tear over your grave.”  
  The Nails bit hard as he laughed, his mirth replaced by bloody foam in his mouth. His hearts hammered a fierce rhythm in his chest as his body was flooded with adrenaline and he launched himself at his enemy in a flurry of wild blows. Morr tutted as he easily evaded the onslaught, leaping backward and sucking in a breath.  
  Vhor saw the bulge in his enemy’s neck as it swelled and braced himself. But not to absorb the attack. Either Morr had underestimated Vhor’s reach, or sorely misjudged the limitations of Terminator armour. It didn’t matter, the outcome was the same.  
  A piercing whine escaped Morr’s mouth as Vhor lunged forward, grasping his head and spearing a thumb-claw through the gland in his neck. The dying note fractured the World Eater’s lenses and peeled layers of paint and gore from his helm. Trivial damage compared to what it inflicted on Morr himself, his hearts bursting inside his chest as the pressure within him fought for release.  
  “So that’s what happens,” Vhor remarked idly.  
  He revved the breaching drills, three spinning heads of spiked adamantine grinding against each other and into the face of his would-be killer, who managed to find his breath for a final howl of agony as his already ruined head was obliterated.  
  Through a mist of blood and brain matter, Vhor caught sight of the remnants of the Third Legion’s boarding party ahead. Howling with rage as the Nails bit, he lumbered towards them with claws splayed.  
  The primary access corridor was already a charnel house before Vhor re-entered the fray, tearing at the Third Legion’s boarders with wild abandon. He hacked a legionary in two, crushing another against the wall before impaling the last of them. The floor was slick with transhuman blood running between the corpses of the slain. The three remaining members of his command squad were amongst them, having paid the ultimate price against the weight of numbers even in superior armour.  
  “Kobani,” Vhor voxed to the bridge. “I’ve run out of things to kill. Point me to the nearest enemy.”  
  ++I think you’ve killed them all, sire,++ Rokem replied. Vhor gave a satisfied grunt that was somehow disappointed all the same.  
  “Route all power to the engines. When all units are recovered from the surface I want you to get us into the Warp as soon as possible.”  
  ++What is our destination?++  
  “The nearest Astartes force.”  
  “We should make for Terra,” Nablus interjected, stirring from where he lay. He struggled to rise, but found it impossible with his legs missing. His voice was steady, betraying no sign of the seriousness of his wounds.  
  “We will,” Vhor replied. “But there are Astartes forces between us and the Emperor. We warn them of Horus’ rebellion, find out who’s loyal and muster a force before the Warmaster’s advance wipes them out. As for those who stand with him…”  
  Nablus nodded in understanding.  
  “Kill our way to Terra.”

“What the hell happened?” Rokem whispered, looking in disbelief at the hololithic projection of Thirty-One Seven, the fourth world on their route to Terra. A large swathe was highlighted in bright red, littered with hazard runes.  
  “A common practice in the IV Legion is to maintain Destroyer-grade weapons at their outpost fortresses,” explained Kato, manipulating the hololith to zoom in on a fortress in ruins at the heart of the radstorm. “The radzone is centred on the fortress, which looks like it took a hell of a beating. That suggests sabotage.”  
  Among the rad-hazard runes orbital weapon identifiers told the lie of the fortress’ dishevelled appearance.  
  “Your input is invaluable as ever, Alpharius,” Vhor’s reply dripped with insincerity.  
  “I’m no-”  
  “No-one knows sabotage like the Alpha Legion, Vhor. You should listen to him,” Nablus chided, thumping forward on ungainly makeshift augmetics. Vhor glared at the sergeant supporting the Alpha Legionnaire. Nablus merely shrugged. “We didn’t invade worlds to ignore the specialism of those we saved.”  
  “If there was conflict, there must have been loyalists,” Kato added. “There could be survivors. Iron Warriors don’t die easily.”  
  “Ah, so you want us to enter an irradiated wasteland on the off-chance of surviving loyalists, Alpharius?” Vhor retorted, leaning in close before continuing in a conspiratorial tone. “Have you considered that there are just as likely to be traitor survivors?”  
  “No, I want to survey the area for any signs of survivors before abandoning them to their fate,” exasperation laced Kato’s reply. “And will you please stop calling me Alph-”  
  “Maybe we should, Vhor,” Nablus interjected. “Time is of the essence and, as I see it, traitor survivors is just as good a reason to go down there as loyalists.”  
  “Do we even have anything that can withstand the rad-levels?” Vhor asked.  
  “Cataphractii-pattern armour could manage easily enough,” Kato considered, adding “Void-hardened too, but if the hermetic seal were even slightl-”  
  “How many of those can we field?” Nablus cut off the Alpha Legionnaire’s objections.  
  “Cataphractii: five. Void-hardened: Twenty-eight,” came the monotone assessment of a servitor.  
  “That’s enough. The garrison couldn’t have numbered more than a score at the outset.”  
  Vhor nodded his agreement with Nablus, to Kato’s wide-eyed disbelief.  
  “Are you seriously suggesting we mount a full frontal assault on a rad-engulfed Iron Citadel with thirty-three Astartes?”  
  A feral grin split Vhor’s face.

The ninety-first expeditionary fleet slipped through the void towards the burnt orange sphere of Thirty-One Seven, weapons trained on the iron citadel. At the vanguard, the _Unconquerable Will_ began taking fire from the planet below.  
  Ordinarily, the ship would have been torn apart by so reckless a forward thrust, but the citadel’s defences were damaged. Where they should have unleashed a disciplined fusillade of devastating magnitude, they delivered only piecemeal resistance. In the circumstances, the _Unconquerable Will_ was able to soak up fire that would have sundered the fleet’s lesser ships, leaving them free to pick off the orbital weapon relays one by one. With all her power routed into her void shields, the _Unconquerable Will_ angled her belly to the planet below. It was then that her error became apparent.

On the bridge, Nablus loomed over Rokem’s shoulder, surveying the stream of data scrolling over the admiral’s dataslate. His augmetic limbs hissed, reminding him why he was not waiting in a drop pod alongside his brothers.  
  “Next time we should invade a Forge World, get me some combat-worthy legs,” he muttered.  
  “Orbital weapon relays down, admiral!” An officer called across the bridge.  
  “Prepare for drop pod deployment in ten,” Rokem spoke into the ship’s vox, broadcasting into the waiting drop pods.  
  “Admiral…,” the officer spoke up again, her voice unsteady with trepidation as the bridge was plunged into chaos with a blare of klaxons.  
  “What the hell is happening?” Rokem roared, frantically swiping through data feeds.  
  “Launch the pods now,” Nablus ordered.  
  “What are these?” Rokem continued, oblivious to anything but the incoming signatures he had identified. “They’re not torped-”  
  The dataslate he was holding clattered to the floor as Nablus lifted him bodily by the throat.  
  “I said launch the pods,” he repeated. “Now.”  
  Rokem gestured frantically at the officer in charge of the launch, who hurriedly input the emergency launch codes.  
  “Emergency launch confirmed. Drop pods deploying,” a servitor verified.  
  The bridge crew scrambled to combat the unexpected final threat from Thirty-One Seven, but it was already too late.

A dozen hyper-sonic objects slammed into the _Unconquerable Will_ , shaking her very superstructure even as the drop pods cleared their launch tubes. Hurled into space when the last orbital defence battery was destroyed with a force that cracked the planet’s crust, the Fourth Legion’s pyrrhic mines bored through the ship’s metal hide, seeking out her vital systems and infecting her with malicious scrapcode. They were maintained as the ultimate failsafe to take an enemy down with the citadel’s last breaths. In mere minutes, one of the mines found the engines.  
  The chain reaction it triggered ripped the ship in two. Vast chunks of debris smashing through the void shields of the _Ravenous_ and the _Cry of Havoc_ , sending them spiralling down to their final end on the surface. The swarm of drop pods accelerating away from her was engulfed in the fireball of her destruction as the _Unconquerable Will_ died screaming.

Vhor’s vision swam as he tore his way out of the restraints. The drop pod doors had failed to open, and looking at Guda it was obvious why. His Cataphractii-pattern power armour had crumpled like flak with the unfettered impact of the crash, unfortunate enough to be harnessed into the face that had slammed into the surface. Kharim seemed to have survived relatively unscathed. Vhor activated the breaching drills in his Cerberus-pattern claws, turning his attention to ripping an exit out of the ruined pod.  
  Through a jagged hole in the shattered drop pod, he emerged into the rad-soaked wasteland of the iron citadel. The earth shook beneath his feet, the after effects of launching a weapon as devastating as pyrrhic mines. Once mighty defences stood in twisted parody of themselves after the orbital attack of the fleet and the subsequent steel rain of drop pods flung wildly at the surface by the death of the _Unconquerable Will_. And, of course, by whatever sabotage had drowned the citadel in radiation. Another tremor struck, shaking a tower free of its foundation to collapse on a crashed drop pod. It had been in bad shape and was probably one of the empty pods used to disguise the true deployment pattern of the invaders, but it boded ill.  
  “This is Vhor, pod one,” he voxed. “We have one casualty. All pods report.”  
  The moment of silence seemed to stretch into eternity before the first static-distorted reply came in,  
  ++Vural, pod five. Sole survivor.++  
  ++Kato, pod seven. One casualty. We saw pods three and six go down, predict casualties total.++  
  ++Scheadda, pod two. No casualties.++  
  Pod two contained the other Cataphractii, accounting for their escaping the rolls of the dead. Beyond that, the prognosis was significantly worse than predicted. There was no word of pod four.  
  A blurt of static screeched through the vox. Vhor tried to tune it out, but it merely intensified. Suddenly it cut out, replaced by a series of coded pulses. He smiled as he deciphered them.  
  ++ _Still alive, Alpharius. Bulut, pod three. Three casualties._ ++  
  ++Always happy to be proved wrong, cousin,++ the Alpha Legionnaire replied.  
  “Vural, move to pod three’s location so we can communicate more easily. Sweep the fortress for survivors, keep an eye out for pod four as you go. We are fewer than I would have liked. That just means we have to pick up the kill-tally of our fallen brothers.”  
  ++Are we to make this a seek and destroy mission without ascertaining the allegiance of any survivors then?++ Kato asked.  
  “They killed my ship, killed my brothers,” Vhor spoke through gritted teeth. “Until you’re certain, let their blood flow.”  
  A series of acknowledgements chimed in. Vhor turned his attention towards the keep at the heart of the citadel, picking his way across rubble-strewn ground as Kharim followed with his Reaper sweeping for threats.  
  Though their own route was devoid of encounters with survivors, it quickly became apparent that the fortress was not, in fact, as dead as it first appeared.  
  ++Contact!++ Vural came in on the vox. ++Confirm Fourth Legion survivors. Bulut opened fire and went down when they returned. Request reinforcement.++  
  ++I am closing on your position,++ Kato responded.  
  It seemed the Iron Warriors had sent scouts to investigate the crashed drop pods. Vhor was about to turn and head towards the fighting when an almost imperceptible noise reached his ears.  
  “Do you hear that, Kharim?”  
  Kharim paused to listen, then nodded as he too picked up the rhythmic, regular thump of a heavy object on a hollow cavity.  
  “Sounds like someone trying to break into something, sire,” he offered.  
  “That it does,” Vhor ran his tongue over his teeth in anticipation, moving on towards the sound and the prospect of bloodshed.  
  Nearing the sound of the battering noise, the sound of boot falling could be made out. Armoured boots. Power armoured boots.  
  The Reaper roared a thunderous refrain as Kharim rounded the corner, pumping thousands of high-velocity shells indiscriminately at anything he detected moving. The handful of Iron Warriors operating some form of battering ram quickly responded with return fire of their own.  
  Compared to the devastation of the Reaper, the boltguns of the Iron Warriors were laughably ineffectual. The volume of enemy fire died down as, one by one, they fell to the unrelenting torrent – all except one, wearing an officer’s crest and crouching behind a boarding shield as he fired. The Castellan of the fortress.  
  Kharim finally eased off the trigger, a last bolt exploding against his armour. The ram had been knocked over by the barrage, now lying unmoving on the ground. Unharmed behind his boarding shield, the Iron Warriors Castellan discarded his boltgun as the hammer fell on an empty chamber.  
  “Stand down, Kharim. This needs to be settled up close.”  
  Kharim dutifully lowered the Reaper. Vhor spread his claws, the powered blades flickering to life without resistance this time. His opponent rose from his crouch with shield still upheld. Reaching back, he drew forth a double-headed chainaxe.  
  “Has Angron finally lost control of his own Legion?” The Castellan asked, gunning the chainblades.  
  Each monomolecular tooth was wreathed in a field of crackling energy, the brutal idea of a powered chainblade taken from the chainfist and refined into individual fields with the elegance of a lightning claw.  
  It didn’t matter. The Castellan’s words confirmed everything he needed to know. Vhor let the Nails take him.  
  The first slash rent a gaping wound in the boarding shield, but it held fast. Realising he would not last long taking the full force of Vhor’s blows, the Castellan used the greater agility afforded to him by his power armour to side-step the next blow. Bringing his axe around with the momentum, he carved a deep ravine across Vhor’s breastplate.  
  The Cataphractii-pattern plate held. The armour was deeply marred, but no blood had been drawn.  
  Having made no attempt to ward the blow, Vhor pressed his attack. Screaming hate through a foaming mouth, he reached around his enemy’s shield to pierce his claws through the grinning iron skull on the pauldron. They emerged a second later hissing as the power blades burned off the traitor blood that stained them.  
  The Castellan stepped back, using the shield to deflect the angle of the next strike rather than face it head-on. It was sluggish, the servo-musculature in his armour likely the only thing keeping the arm moving at all.  
  He evaded another flurry of blows before switching back to the offensive. The axe swung in a high arc, directed with precision at the gouge left by the last blow. If it made contact this time, the blow could cleave Vhor in two. Spotting the danger through the red haze of bloodlust, Vhor scrambled to raise a claw to meet the falling axe head.  
His grip held the axe fast before the blades made contact. Activating the palm-mounted breaching drills, Vhor release the axe to meet them and its doom.  
  The breaching drills battered against the axe head, desperately trying to tear into it. The struggle proved futile. Instead, the axe bit into the Cerberus-pattern lightning claw, shredding the breaching drills and embedding itself deep in the gauntlet before the motor choked with the strain.  
  Taking advantage of his opponent’s effective disarmament, Vhor reached forward with his remaining, functioning claw to tear the shield from the Iron Warrior’s arm. As soon as he gripped it, the Iron Warrior released the shield from his arm, simultaneously engaging some mechanism on his battle axe that allowed it to part into two single-headed axes.  
  The still-revving blade of the axe, which had previously formed the back face to the axe left embedded in the War Hound’s left gauntlet, slammed into Vhor’s side, tearing a deep gouge in his armour. The armour there had not the thickness of the breastplate, a warm bloom of radiation flooding Vhor’s side as the blade chewed through armour into flesh.  
  On the edge of the battle, Kharim raised his Reaper as he saw the fight turning against his Centurion.  
  Vhor willed the release of the shield held fast in his grip, but it did not fall. Still held fast in his claws, he realised the axe had severed his neural link to the claw as it followed through on the swing.  
  Roaring his frustration, he batted the next axe blow aside with the shield in his unwilling grasp, a chunk of his claw parted from the whole by the blow. He felt radiation rushing to his hands as the hermetic seal of his armour was further compromised.  
  The Iron Warrior ducked a swing from the other claw, but failed to account for the haft of the axe still lodged in it. The blow to his head sent him to the ground and wrenched the axe free to fall several metres away.  
  As he tried to rise, a boot fell on his leg with a sickening crunch of buckling metal and snapping bone. The other fell on the arm that held his remaining half-axe, pinning him to the ground beneath the enormous weight of a Cataphractii-armoured Space Marine.  
  Kharim lowered the Reaper, watching impassively as Vhor raining blow after blow on the Iron Warrior’s head with his inactive claws. The helm, then the head within, crumbled under the blows. The blows did not let up. By the time he was finished, a bloody crater was left where the head had been, and the claw holding the shield had all but disintegrated with the force of blows on its compromised integrity.  
  Vhor pulled the scrapped remains of his ancient lightning claws from his arms. The Cerberus-pattern lightning claws were ancient heirlooms of the Legion, the galaxy would not see their like again. Without the armoured gauntlets, the skin of his arms began to blister with radiation burns even as his melanochrome shot into overdrive to flood his skin with melanin. Within seconds his forearms had the jet-black pigmentation of a Salamanders legionary.  
  Stooping, he lifted the two axes from the ground in newly blackened hands, holding them together. There was no apparent mechanism by which the two axes could be reunited into the double-headed whole they had begun as, the only divergence from absolute pragmatism a name, _Janus_ , printed in Olympian glyphs mirrored on each face.  
  Looking up, he saw the indigo-armoured figures of Kato and his Alpha Legionnaires arrive at the head of what remained of the War Hounds. They stopped dead when they saw his scorched arms.  
  “There’s something they want in there, or someone,” Vhor gestured to the door the Iron Warriors had been battering at, then to the now still pneumatic ram. “Get that ram going again, Alpharius.”  
  “I’m not Alpharius.”  
  Vhor sighed, a brief, weary smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.  
  “Just… just get that door open, Kato.”  
  It was the first time Vhor had ever used his name.

The War Hounds and Alpha Legionnaires advanced into the chamber with weapons raised, Vhor at the vanguard wielding the axes _Janus_. They were met by two figures in unmarked armour, though of very different stripes.  
  The first wore Mark III plate scorched black by the weapons of a Destroyer, though the stylised helm made it clear he was an Iron Warrior. Though he had a rad-missile launcher slung over his back, his weapons of choice were handfuls of pale green fire flickering in charred gauntlets. Looking at it caused the Butcher’s Nails to buck violently in the heads of the War Hounds.  
  The second wore armour of a Mark unknown to Vhor, unadorned but for a pair of eagles on his cuirass, one across the breastplate and the other rearing behind his head. In his hands he held a broadsword pointed at throat-height. It was a weapon of austere beauty, inscribed with the name _Libertas_ along a blade almost the size of an unaugmented man.  
  Vhor spun _Janus_ in his hands, fighting his every instinct to let the axes cut into the Legionaries before him. Averting his eyes from the fire that set lightning bolts of agony lancing through his brain, he focussed on the eagle-armoured warrior.  
  “I have lost more brothers than I care for today and am sorely tempted to add you to the tally of their vengeance. You’re still alive because the traitors were trying to get to you. The question is, who are you?”  
  The figure in the eagle armour answered him.  
  “I am Nathaniel Garro, Agentia Primus of the Sigillite’s Knights Errant.”  
  Without turning his gaze from Garro, Vhor levelled an axe at the Destroyer. Garro turned his head slightly, a faint click betraying a private vox communication. The Destroyer let the witchfire in his hands dissipate.  
  “Perses Thane,” he rasped through a throat ravaged by the weapons of his trade. “Destroyer and one-time Librarian of the Iron Warriors. I’m afraid the weather is my fault.”  
  He nodded pointedly to Vhor’s blackened hand. The hand’s grip tightened around the haft. Garro rested _Libertas_ on the raised _Janus_ and gently pushed it downwards. Vhor resisted for a moment before relenting. He pulled _Janus_ back, lowering the axes to a less hostile stance.  
  “Since when does the Sigillite have his own Legionaries?”  
Garro mirrored him, lowering his blade.  
  “Since there were those who would forsake their own Legions and primarchs to remain loyalty to the Emperor. Legionaries like you, I deem.”  
  The unasked question hung pregnant in the air for a moment.  
  “Tukan Vhor. Centurion of the World… of the War Hounds,” Vhor corrected himself, he was an eater of worlds no longer.  
  “You have my thanks for your intervention,” Thane put in. “My former brothers would have made leaving quite a battle.”  
  “The battle is won, but count the cost – we will not win the war if we win battles like this.”  
  “Certainly not if we lose them like Isstvan,” Garro agreed. “Come with me to Terra, join the Knights Errant and I will show you how a few warriors can win meaningful victories.” Silence greeted his offer, and so he continued. “A force drawn from across the Legions to combine their strengths and offset their weaknesses. The subtlety of the Alpha Legion, the unyielding will of the Iron Warriors, the ferocity of the War Hounds. A scalpel to the sword of the Legiones Astartes.”  
  “It sounds like their kind of thing,” Vhor gestured to the Alpha Legionnaires. “It doesn’t sound like mine.”  
  “That’s what Varren said,” Garro smiled behind his Corvus-pattern helm. “But he’s getting used to it.”  
  “Varren? Macer Varren?”  
  “The very same.”  
  Vhor paused.  
  “I have little prospect of doing the traitors substantial harm my way,” he shrugged, mag-locking the axes _Janus_ to his thighs and offering his unarmoured hand to Garro. “If this can make the traitors bleed, it can be no bad thing.”  
  Sheathing _Libertas_ across his back, the Knight Errant gripped the War Hound in a warrior’s handshake, bare armour to bare flesh.

Between the new Mark VI armour and the still-raw synthetic skin-grafts beneath, Vhor’s hands felt alien to him as they wrapped around the hafts of _Janus_. The axes had been unwilling to give up the secret of their joining, neither Thane nor any Techmarine in service to the Knights Errant able to coax it from them. The mark of their parting, the rad-poisoned wound in his side, also endured. It would never fully heal, but he was, he reflected as the Nails pleaded for him to sink the axes into living flesh, no stranger to such wounds.  
  He looked up as the chamber door opened, scowling at the interruption. The scowl faded into surprise as he beheld the gold-armoured form of a custodian enter.  
  “I bring a gift,” the custodian began. “To remind you of the importance of the mission you are about to undertake and the trust the Emperor has placed in the Knights Errant.”  
  Vhor remained silent. The custodian held out a strip of parchment inscribed with ornate High Gothic script that read _‘Tell my son he’s a dick. Love, the Emprah’_.  
  “Will you swear this oath of moment, in the name of the Emperor of Mankind himself?” the custodian asked.  
  Vhor nodded, kneeling to allow the custodian to affix the oath paper to his armour with a seal bearing the eagle and lightning bolt of the Legio Custodes.  
  “For the Emperor,” he swore.

**Author's Note:**

> This is a narrative rendition of a player's character bio from a Horus Heresy RPG I GMed. Tukan Vhor, Cerberus-pattern lightning claws, Avakul Morr and Janus are Birdman's brain-children. The oath of moment was a joke that got out of hand.
> 
> Timeline:  
> 005.M31: Isstvan III Atrocity  
> 005.M31: Vhor summoned to Isstvan V  
> 006.M31: Dropsite Massacre  
> c.007.M31: Sabotage of the Iron Citadel  
> c.010.M31: Vhor receives the Emperor's Oath of Moment


End file.
